In October last year the chancellor raised taxes by £40bn, announced a stamp duty hike for second homes and increased employer’s national insurance contributions.

Defence spending, welfare reforms and the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) forecast dominated the Statement.

According to the OBR forecast, UK growth will be 1% in 2025, down from the 2% forecast in October’s budget, however the following years will see a faster rise than previously predicted.

Following the recent announcement, the government is investing £2bn into social and affordable housing in a bid to come within “touching distance” of the 1.5 million homes target.

According to Rachel Reeves, the OBR have concluded that housebuilding will reach a 40-year high of 305,000 a year by the end of the forecast period.

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The chancellor explained that £600m will be invested into construction education, addressing the skills shortage and creating jobs for young people.

The key points of the Statement include:

• a reiteration of the plan to invest £2bn into social and affordable housing to deliver up to 18,000 homes
• reconfirming the commitment of £625m over four years to boost existing training routes for construction education, which is expected to deliver up to 60,000 additional skilled workers
• providing an additional £100m to support 35,000 construction-focused skills bootcamp places, £40m for up to 10,000 additional places on new construction foundation apprenticeships and an additional £165m to boost funding for providers to deliver more construction courses
• launching a new teacher industry exchange scheme to attract industry experts to teach in further education
• investing £100m to establish 10 new technical excellence colleges specialised in construction in every region in England
• increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027
• confirming welfare reforms, with the OBR forecasting a £4.8bn saving from the welfare budget in 2029/30